I feel the same way, I don't fully trust hosted solutions but don't completely trust myself to host my own -- which is where E2E encryption comes into play, but

I feel the same way, I don't fully trust hosted solutions but don't completely trust myself to host my own -- which is where E2E encryption comes into play, but a malicious host would still have access to loads of metadata (timestamps, IPs, etc.). Blockchain-based solutions like Status.im appear to do away with these sorts of issues through decentralization -- but you still have to put trust into their network. Solutions like TLS & OMEMO over Tor for XMPP seem to be a very strong privacy-centered solution outside of blockchain-based applications.